Felt Marker Voids Your Hard Drive Warranty?

As a follow up, why do some companies such as WD, Hitachi, and Samsung not care?

Well, first you have to realize that Seagate is still the largest spindle disk company in the World. It is a known fact that +/-90% of all RMA'ed drives end up being repaired easily or not bad at all. With such a large volume of RMA's either due to bad manufacturing (*COUGH* 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB, 2TB manufacturing screwups *COUGH*) or just large volumes from Corporate OEM's such as EMC, NetAPP, HP, and Dell; The RMA department has a lot to deal with and those costs are exponentially multiplied by volume.

So to wrap back to the the original question of this post, other companies take graffiti ridden drives because they can eat the cost better. The best at being able to cope with these costs is undoubtedly Hitachi. Why? They are the ONLY company that designs and manufactures their own drives 100% of the way through and they have the procedures in place to easily deal with things from the most simple: Sharpie/Pen/Sticker Graffiti to the most complex: Government RMA's consisting of just the top drive plate (remaining drive is smashed to prevent data breach).

Hope that helps.
 
On machines I've built (and also at the OEM I used to work for) we ALWAYS labeled the cables at both ends so that you'd be able to tell what drive was what port (or what controller).

So the labels would wrap around the SATA cables and say D0 C0 P0 (Drive 0, Controller 0, Port 0) and so on. If we were using rounded SCSI or multilane SAS, we'd put a range of drives instead of one.

Of course, we'd also sticker the hot-swap drive bays as well, but if there were just internal drives then we had a precedence for the order of the drives in each case.

I mean, if you just mark up your drive and you happen to move it physically around (especially in a RAID or mixed RAID setup) how do you know you've got the right drive with the right cable/port?
 
Most major OEM's use drive caddies to identify drives for both external and internal arrays.

For more "cost effective solutions" that are home-brew or piece-milled, vendors suggest:

1) Sticker labels on the interface end or interface reverse "front"
2) Labeled 3.5" rails (ones used in many cases for mounting HDD's)
3) Zip tie tags through the mid-hole underside of the drive and tucked underside
4) Labeling each of the 3.5" bays / docking bays within the case
5) Labeling cables / connectors

As you can see, there are ample options for identifying a disk physically. Writing on a drive is just a more casual, I'll say it: lazy, approach to drive identification.

The drive is obviously yours to do with as you wish, but the warranty can sometimes be voided for unusual care practices. As the storage market expands, realize that the whole sharpie issue will continue, if not expand well into the SSD manufacturers of the future.
 
I loved this comment in the article...

The special formulation of Sharpie ink will seep through the drive casing and interfere with the drive head to interact with the platters. And you also must avoid touching the tiny unicorn that runs on the platter in order to make it spin.
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It's likely they're voiding the warranty because any writing on the casing would be difficult to remove and then they couldn't just slap it back in the box as somebody elses RMA replacement making them think they got a new drive. You hardly ever get a new part anymore when you do an RMA.
 
Unexploded said:
Doesn't surprise me, there seems to be a real push to lower the number of returned drives.See also, the new $25 fee for the RMA of your drive.

After factoring in my cost re: shipping, plus their new fee. It made more sense just to bin the drive and buy a new one. I suppose that's cheaper (in the short term) for them, then say, addressing quality control issues. Thanks Seagate!
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Who is doing a $25 fee?
I mean geez, its down to $60ish for a 1.5TB drive (I saw a sale on SD today for $66 for a 1.5)
 
Can't edit to combine posts.

c0mad0r said:
the most complex: Government RMA's consisting of just the top drive plate (remaining drive is smashed to prevent data breach).
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Wow they take just the plate back? I mean I knew that smashing was the only way to 100% prevent data stealing, but I never thought they could RMA the plate.
 
Devistater said:
Wow they take just the plate back? I mean I knew that smashing was the only way to 100% prevent data stealing, but I never thought they could RMA the plate.
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Yes, many Federal, State & Local Government customers have the right to just return the drive plate for RMA. They submit a form along with the top plate stating "proper" disposal of the remaining unit has been fulfilled.

My favorite are the ones returned with bullet holes and sand in them. It has and does happen! :eek:
 
Devistater said:
Who is doing a $25 fee?
I mean geez, its down to $60ish for a 1.5TB drive (I saw a sale on SD today for $66 for a 1.5)
Click to expand...

The $25 fee Seagate charges is for advanced RMA only, where the RMA drive replacement is sent prior to receiving the failed unit.
 
c0mad0r said:
The $25 fee Seagate charges is for advanced RMA only, where the RMA drive replacement is sent prior to receiving the failed unit.
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Correct. The charge is new, though. I've always cross-shipped drives and this is the first I've come across it.
 
I've never had trouble with Seagate drives myself. As for the writing, never heard of this one before, but then I've never written on a PC part with a sharpie either. I tend to keep loose parts in static bags and stick labels on the bags.
 
I suspect this is all because replacement drives are not new drives. They are reconditioned drives, and them having to stop and remove stickers, marker notes, etc... would slow down the process.

It's petty, but I can see it as an issue.

There are removable 'dots' you can get you can put on the drive, then write on it. Same for labels.
 
wow... that's freaking insane... i've got nothing but glorious praise for returning hdds to Western Digital... Quite some years ago I bought a set of 6x 400GB WD RE2 Drives (WD4000YS) and built a raid system with them... luckily after i had upgraded that to 8x 1TB WD Green drives I started having failure after failure of the RE2 drives and one by one I returned them via the wholesaler I got them from.. drives came back, but after the 4th or 5th one failed (fairly recently and the drives would've been nearly 3 years old) I contacted Western Digital and explained how much trouble I've been having with this particular model explaining that they're in a well cooled system with a silverstone 750w psu and that other hard drives in it (for OS) have never had a problem nor any other hardware in the system. I requested to get a different model to replace the 6 drives. To my surprise they did! Not only that, they advance rma'd them to me (shipped them to me before I sent them the originals) AND they paid for shipping BOTH WAYS. They sent me out a glorious brand new set of 6x 500GB WD RE3 Drives (WD5002ABYS) which are larger capacity, faster performing and the latest model (at the time). Western Digital went above and beyond in my book. Western Digital have been my only choice for a long ime and this only cements that preference.
 
oh and my drives had scratches on them and stickers with 1 to 6 written on them..
 
Unexploded said:
Doesn't surprise me, there seems to be a real push to lower the number of returned drives.See also, the new $25 fee for the RMA of your drive.

Thanks Seagate!
Click to expand...

I've RMAed four Seagate drives in the last month or so, each time was $19.99.

And to pack and ship it properly, would cost over $19.99.

I'll never understand anyone's gripe about $20 for an Advanced RMA that includes proper packaging and a return label included.
 
Wonder if the sticker, not the writing, is actually the issue. If he covered one of the holes, they have reason to turn down the RMA. Otherwise, this is ridiculous.
 
probably just annoying when the reship that "refurbished" drive it also needs a new sticker
 
Hmm.

I wonder if WD would complain about my old-school labels on my drives in my Drobo...

 
c0mad0r said:
All,

While I find this practice painful from the end-user standpoint as well, you are all a bit more understanding why they do it.
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It's still a lame practice to save a few bucks (as long as the serial number isn't covered over.) You could put a new sticker on top the label. It takes 1 word template to create and print onto sticker paper which is available at WalMart. You can scribble out any other profanities with another black sharpie over top.

I would think it would lose in any court of law since there are no such stipulations in the warranty.
 
c0mad0r said:
Yes, many Federal, State & Local Government customers have the right to just return the drive plate for RMA. They submit a form along with the top plate stating "proper" disposal of the remaining unit has been fulfilled.

My favorite are the ones returned with bullet holes and sand in them. It has and does happen! :eek:
Click to expand...

Now THAT is [H]
 
c0mad0r said:
All,

I rarely post here anymore, but this story peeked my attention enough to do such. Having worked in Storage for several years now (Milpitas, CA. based drive manufacturer) I can note with a high level of truth why this is.
...
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interesting read, thank you.
 
460cidpower said:
When I read the headline, I thought to myself "this sounds like the doing of the D'bags at Seagate". Sure enough!

After buying a 2TB external drive from them, only to have it die in a week, and the two replacements they sent me also die, I swore to never buy their stuff again. It seems to me, this is just one more reason.
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I bought a external MAXTOR enclosure about 2 years ago thinking "I've had good luck with maxtors in the past.. should be still good... turns out the drives in it died.. pulled it apart.. seagate 7200.11's It was just after that I found out seagate bought maxtor :( Seagate lost my respect and their reputation in my eyes for their horrible 7200.11 drives. Seagate went down hill in the last few years I guess.. my brother still has a really old 60gb 7200 rpm seagate drive still running.. 28906 hours and counting. Hell I still have some old 2-4gb drives and even a 120mb! seagate drive from the late 80s.. all still running. They need to get it together.
 
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